


Tea Minus Zero

by zigostia



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Food as a Metaphor for Love, M/M, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23196526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia
Summary: “He made you tea,”Molly repeated in awe.“Iknow,”John said. “Is he going to die, Molly? Do you think he’s made some sort of death pact?”
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 27
Kudos: 158





	Tea Minus Zero

John woke up, got dressed, and blearily began trudging his way out of his room, hopping on one foot as he yanked the ankle of his left sock higher. He opened the door and nearly barrelled straight into a white fluffy dressing gown.

“Jesus Christ!” he shouted.

“Good morning, John,” Sherlock said, casually, as if he stood point-blank from the door to John’s room every single morning. Which, now that John thought of it, wouldn’t be as unrealistic as it should’ve been. He thought about it some more, then was unnerved by how not unnerved he was at the thought.

“I’ll never be normal again,” he said, accidentally out loud.

Sherlock sniffed decisively. _“Normal,”_ he said, like a four-letter word.

“Yeah,” John sighed.

A moment ticked by. John tried to ignore a growing itch on the side of his neck. Sherlock did nothing. John cleared his throat. Sherlock did nothing. John took a pointed step forwards, so close he felt the other’s body heat sinking into his own. Sherlock seemed perfectly content to continue do nothing, now approximately whilst standing 0.2 millimetres away from John.

“Not that I don’t mind,” John said, ignoring how hoarse his voice had gotten and hoping Sherlock would pass it off as a morning’s lack of use, “but, uh, could you move?”

Sherlock did nothing. Then he blinked like a machine gun for a few seconds.

John raised an eyebrow as high as it could go.

“Of course,” Sherlock said, too quickly, and stepped to the side.

“Thanks,” John said.

“You’re welcome,” Sherlock said.

Right before John shut the door to the washroom, he heard the pitter-patter of hurried slippers down the stairs.

He watched his reflection in the mirror begrudgingly twist into a confused, yet fond, smile.

-+-+-+-

John brushed his teeth, went downstairs, and reached for the kettle, when he noticed that it was gone. In its place, a bunsen burner stood smack-dab in the middle of the counter. 

John stared at it and felt as if it radiated some sort of inexplicably arrogant energy, as if it were sneering at John and daring him to question its authority. He opened his mouth to holler for Sherlock before a second consideration made it snap shut. He’d find out sooner or later. (That’s what you said about the bees, a part of him whispered ominously. John told it to bugger off.)

The only downside was the lack of a morning cuppa, and this John mourned silently as he trudged his way to the coffee table.

… The coffee table, where a still-steaming cup of tea was sitting delicately on a saucer, right in front of where he usually sat.

Across from it, wild dark curls peeked up from above an open newspaper. When John didn’t sit down, the newspaper lowered to reveal bright, slate-grey eyes attached to the curls. They gazed at John innocuously.

“What’s the matter, John?” they said.

“You made me tea,” John said.

At this, Sherlock fully lowered his paper to give John one of his patented _duh_ looks. (It’d been established a long time ago that there was no more use in him replying to these painfully-obvious, redundant, waste-of-breath statements with a sarcastic, biting response, as, with time and frequency, those responses themselves became, as per Sherlock’s explanation, painfully obvious, redundant, and a waste of breath.)

“Where did the kettle go?” John asked, retrying.

Sherlock’s lip curled. “The kettle was inefficient. It converted the majority of its joules towards insulation rather than heating itself. The bunsen burner has a much higher wattage, as well as a more sophisticated precision.”

“Alright,” John said. “But _you made me tea.”_

“It’s Earl Grey,” Sherlock said, like that explained everything.

John looked at Sherlock, whose face was utterly indecipherable as always, and then he ran a hand through his hair and shook his head, once, very quickly, before taking a seat.

He was very, very, very, very aware of Sherlock staring at him with the intensity of a thousand Suns. 

“Um,” he said, and then coughed. He sent up a quick, silent prayer to whoever was listening that this wasn’t going to be a repeat of Baskerville, and picked up the teacup. He drew in a deep breath, blew it out across the surface of the teacup, watched it ripple out, and, slowly, took a tiny sip.

He swallowed. He wondered idly if Sherlock’s gaze would burn a hole straight through his forehead. 

“Huh,” he said. He took another sip. “Not bad,” he said out loud, and licked his lips. “Could maybe use a little more milk.”

“Milk?” Sherlock said, like John had just suggested Sherlock to strip naked and run through the streets. _“Milk?”_

“Uh,” John said.

“How many millilitres? Whole fat or skim? Almond, cow, soy, or llama?”

“Wh— _llama?”_

“Llama milk!” Sherlock said. “I should’ve known.” From out of nowhere he whipped out an honest-to-earth legal pad and pen and started furiously scribbling something down.

John quickly drained the cup of tea, because while it may have needed a little more milk it was still damn good tea, and then he reached over and snatched the legal pad out of Sherlock’s hands.

“Hey!” Sherlock protested.

John took a quick, curious glance and saw _Llama milk ― Amazon? Book flight to Peru?_ in a sharp-edged scribble. He felt a throbbing in his temple.

“No llama milk,” he said firmly.

He swore Sherlock almost looked disappointed.

“But thank you for the tea,” John said, enunciating clearly and carefully. “I liked it.”

“You said it needed more milk,” Sherlock said, all toddler accusatory and narrow-eyed.

“I—it’s a fucking cup of tea, Sherlock, it’s not quantum physics.”

Sherlock muttered something under his breath that John would bet anything was _Quantum physics is easier._

“Look, Sherlock,” John said. “It was thoughtful of you to make me tea, but I can do it myself.”

Now Sherlock _definitely_ looked disappointed, and John heard faint alarm bells strike up into a constant ringing in his head.

-+-+-+-

“Do you know why Sherlock’s acting weird?” John said with no preamble.

Molly looked confused, then followed John’s gaze to where Sherlock was bent over so far into Henry Smith’s stomach that he was nearly licking his exposed kidneys.

“Oh,” Molly said, still looking confused. “No, Sherlock just does that.” She shrugged as she watched Sherlock stick a hand into Smith where no hand should ever stick.

“What?” John said. “No, I know. Not _that._ But, um. He’s been. Kind of. Um.” He fumbled for the right words. “He stood right in front of my bedroom door this morning.”

Molly looked at John with a little bit of concern. “Uh-huh,” she said. “And?”

John thought about it for a while before concluding that, okay, yeah, maybe that was just normal Sherlock.

“And he made me tea,” he said.

Molly’s eyes went huge.

“I _know,”_ John said triumphantly.

“Tea?” Molly said, voice hushed. “Are you sure it wasn’t drugged?”

“I checked! I did all the tests, Molly, and everything came out clean!” John’s voice rose in panic. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him!”

 _“He made you tea,”_ Molly repeated in awe.

 _“I know,”_ John said. “Is he going to die, Molly? Do you think he’s made some sort of death pact?”

“I don’t know,” Molly said. Her eyes were wide, now, turned to Sherlock in a whole new light as he took a scalpel and violently shoved it through Smith’s chest cavity. “You should really talk to him about this, John. It might be serious.”

“I know,” John said for the third time, grimly. 

Across the room, Sherlock hollered, “Do you have any chainsaws in here?”

“Oh, I'd better go help him,” Molly said. “I think we have one in the storage room.” Before she left, she turned to John with a grave look on her face. “Keep me updated, okay?”

“Of course,” John said, and wondered briefly why the morgue kept a chainsaw in the storage room.

-+-+-+-

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

“Hello, Doctor Watson,” the tinny voice came through the phone. “I am in the middle of a meeting that could either establish national peace or unleash a pandemic that wipes out a fifth of the country’s population. I hope this is important.”

“Mycroft,” John said, relief seeping through his shoulders. “Thank god.” He paused. “Wait, one fifth?”

“Seventeen percent, to be exact.”

“Oh,” John said. “In that case, I’ll make this quick.” He allowed himself half a second to swallow his spit and then blurted, _“Sherlockmademeteawhatdoesthismean.”_

There was a pause. In the background of the other side of the phone call, John heard someone speaking in an accent that sounded vaguely Welsh.

“Oh, dear,” Mycroft said. “The poor boy.”

“I’ll send you a picture of him drunk and covered in glitter,” John said desperately.

“He’s in love with you,” Mycroft said. “I expect that photo by two o’clock, Doctor Watson. Have a good day.”

The phone beeped, long and trilling.

-+-+-+-

John stared at the phone in his hand.

“What the fuck,” he said loudly.

“Profanity, John,” Sherlock said, coming down the stairs. He stopped by the foot of the stairs and his eyes narrowed. “You called Mycroft,” he said accusingly.

“I,” John said. “What? No I didn’t. How did you know?”

“I can smell him,” Sherlock said, his voice low and putrid. “Like vanilla pudding and Victorian sponge cake.”

“Uh, okay,” John said, trying furiously and failing to ignore the voice in his head screaming HE’S IN LOVE WITH YOU MYCROFT SAID HE’S IN LOVE WITH YOU MYCROFT SAID.

Sherlock looked at John closer and his brows drew together. “What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing’s wrong,” John said. (HE’S IN LOVE WITH YOU MYCROFT SAID.) “Lovely weather outside, 'innit?”

Sherlock gave John a hard stare. “John, it’s been raining every single day for the past week.”

“I love rain,” John said weakly. (YOU KNOW WHO ELSE LOVES WHO MYCROFT SAID _holy shit shut the fuck up.)_

Sherlock drew closer menacingly, towering over John. His eyes grew darker as he pinned him with a look. “John, what’s going on?”

John’s mouth went dry. “Um,” he said.

“John,” Sherlock said, his voice getting lower and deeper, and holy hell John was going to _murder_ Mycroft if he was fucking with him, Bubonic Plague Lite or not, and Sherlock was getting closer and closer so John gritted his teeth and took the final steps to close the distance between them and hopped up to his tippy-toes and gave Sherlock what was potentially ranked as his third worst kiss, only beaten by Madeline Brown in grade five and the raccoon. 

He pulled away because he was going to fall over from the momentum and the tippy-toes combined. He looked at Sherlock, who—woah. Whose eyes had gone insanely huge, like dinner plates.

“Why did you do that?” Sherlock whispered.

Oh, fuck. “Mycroft said,” John said.

Sherlock’s eyes got even huger. “Mycroft told you to _kiss_ me?”

“Oh, fuck,” John said. “No, he. Um. I told him you made me tea and asked him why and he told me you were in love with me.” He was absolutely shocked he managed to string together all those pronouns without swapping them up, especially when his brain had turned into a huge steaming pile of mush somewhere in the back of his head.

Sherlock was silent for so long that when he finally spoke, John had already gotten to the clean-up and evidence removal procedure of his plotting to murder Mycroft.

“John?” Sherlock said, and his voice was soft.

“Yeah,” John said, and wondered if Mrs. Hudson still had those drugs from the cartel she ran before her husband died.

“I think I’ll have to thank Mycroft,” Sherlock said, sounding like the words gutted him.

“What?” John said. “Wait, so you mean—”

And no one would ever know what John thought Sherlock meant, because before he could finish those words Sherlock ducked his head and swiftly occupied his mouth with what was _definitely_ not John’s third worst kiss. In fact, it didn’t even place. 

-+-+-+-

“Hey, Sherlock?” John said, a long, long while later.

Sherlock hummed.

“I’ll make you tea, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I realized I hadn't posted any Johnlock fics in 2020 yet and that immediately demanded to be fixed. I started writing this well after midnight and am posting this right about at 3AM, so that's my excuse for the blatant crack in this fic. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did writing it.
> 
> P.S. With all the news about COVID-19, I hope everybody is safe and healthy in these times. Stay wonderful <3
> 
> P.P.S. I swear I didn't notice this until I posted so this is the most fantastical coincidence ever but take a look at that word count. Damn!


End file.
